The newest iteration of the Forza Xbox racing franchise releases drivers out onto the open roads of Colorado. We drove the route in real life to see how the game compares.

Forza Horizons: On the Real (and Virtual) Roads of Colorado

Forza Horizons: On the Real (and Virtual) Roads of Colorado

A few weeks ago, I took a 2013 Porsche Panamera GTS out on the open roads of Colorado, careening around corners and cruising through tunnels cut through mountains west of Denver. Last week, I repeated the same drive. But this time I had a controller in my hand as I played a preview version of Forza Horizon, the new open-world variant of the mega-selling Xbox racing franchise.

Forza 4, the previous game in the franchise, simulates some of the world's great racetracks. But drivers can race only on these closed courses—there's no venturing out. In Forza Horizons, out Oct. 23, not only can players drive amazing real-life cars, but they can also take them out of the racetrack onto the highways of Colorado, which developers Turn 10 and Playground Games modeled for this expansive game.

Everything you see in Forza Horizon references a real-world highway, scenic vista, or actual object. That seemed like a lofty goal, so this summer I set out to prove whether it were true—I drove most of the route through the Rocky Mountain State that the developers used as reference material to see if the reality matched the simulation. Ford let me borrow a 2013 Flex, which was ideal for recording the video and photos. And to gauge the experience of driving fast on curvy mountain roads, I also borrowed a 2013 Porsche Panamera GTS. Then, this past week, I finally got my hands on an early preview build of the game

Scenery and Objects

Scenery and Objects

The game has 216 distinct roads. I can't share every detail about the map Turn 10 provided to help me on the drive, but it starts in Denver, stretches west toward Glenwood Springs, dips down to Paonia and then to Grand Junction (and the Colorado National Monument), heads south toward Telluride, then east toward Colorado Springs. It's well over 1000 miles of reference material, and I probably drove about 700 miles of it.

You shouldn't miss the route just west of Denver along Highway 70 toward Grand Junction, Colo. I'm convinced it's the most scenic drive in America. You can drive 80 mph for most of the route. The scenery changes from tree-lined mountaintops to a rocky terrain with tunnels carved through mountains, bounded by river gorges and man-made reservoirs aplenty. It's all downhill for 3 to 4 hours of driving, and the four-lane roadway is mostly congestion-free in midday. The scenery changes about every 30 minutes, as though Colorado itself is shifting gears.

The guys at Turn 10 Studios didn't simply re-create this one major highway, though. Driving on an Xbox 360 isn't driving a real car, and even with these stunning vistas, players would have gotten bored. Ralph Fulton of Playground Games, a design director for the game, tells me that gamers expect scenes to change about every 3 minutes, not every 30. So Forza Horizon includes many of the highway scenes I drove through, but condensed for the Xbox experience.

Some of the best scenery in the game, though, is on the northeastern side of the map, a bit south and east of the fictional town of Beaumont. Fulton told me this is based on reference material collected near the real town of Paonia, Colo., and the Paonia Reservoir. You'll find tunnels, road-side barns, and raging waterfalls rendered perfectly.

And if gawking at the scenery isn't your thing, don't worry. On the long, straight highway in the game running north to south to the far west, just south of the fictional town of Carson (which is based on Central City, Colo.), you can gun that Audi R8 GT all the way up to 200 mph.